Dell's new story: Goldilocks and the three virtual infrastructures

This server is too engineered. This server is too bespoke. This validated server's just right!

Dell's decided the world needs something between roll-your-own infrastructure and converged infrastructure's insistence on controlling exactly what's inside a chassis down to the last screw.

The result is something Dell's calling a “Validated System for Virtualization.”

Like a converged system, a validated system will ship with all the VMware goodness you need to start running VMs not many minutes after plugging in power and Ethernet.

Unlike converged systems, you can choose from a menu of server, storage and networking options. You can also therefore pick the scale of your desired rig with rather more precision than is possible with more rigidly-defined rigs: Dell's promising the ability to add a single drive or compute node to your design.

Dell tells The Register it's done this because it sees a gap in the market for something that delivers a lot of the converged infrastructure experience without railroading users on hardware choices.

Which makes sense: converged appliances tend to come in a few sizes, making over-provisioning eminently possible and scaling expensive, as it has to be done in big chunks.

They've also found new ways to help you pay for this: Dell's Financial Services arm has been anointed as VMware's preferred financing partner. We're told that means “flexible payment plans for VMware solutions,” which will soon be on the table, including opex-like payment plans.

Validated systems will emerge in September under “directed availability” and become generally available some time in calendar Q4 2016.

Dell's also announced a new Wyse Appliance, new bundles of VSAN Ready Nodes tuned for VMware's desktop virtualisation suite, and new security appliances. ®